State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss today published a special report on the defense establishment. He found many former IDF officers employed at Israel's three government-owned defense companies - Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. (IAI) (TASE: ARSP.B1), Israel Military Industries Ltd. (IMI), and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. - without their IDF pensions being reduced as required by law.
At the end of 2006, and through mid-2007, 318 IDF pensioners with the rank of major and above worked at IAI, IMI, and Rafael. The State Comptroller found that 57, or 14%, of the IDF pensioners at these companies never notified the IDF of their employment at the government companies, or only notified it about part of the period of employment. Consequently, their pensions were not reduced as mandated.
At the same time, neither the IDF, nor the defense companies, carried out the mandated cross-checking.
The State Comptroller also found that, in order to bypass the Ministry of Finance directives, the defense companies hired the IDF pensioners as consultants through personnel agencies, even though they worked at similar jobs as the companies' regular employees, and in some cases even held management posts. The companies' executives claimed that the reduced pensions made it more difficult to hire IDF pensioners.
Lindenstrauss also examined the IDF Home Front Command's readiness to meet a chemical attack. He found serious flaws in the distribution of gas masks, with a drop in the proportion of the population with gas masks in their possession since 2003.
Lindenstrauss said that since a chemical attack could occur with little advance warning, there is concern that even if foreign markets for gas could be found, imports of gas masks would not take place in time, with the result that a large part of Israel's population is exposed.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on March 2, 2009
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